Morning Soundwalks

Come join us for some exploratory deep listening and field recording. Equipment can be checked out from Davis Family Library or just use your mobile phone or own recording device, or just bring your ears to walk and listen

Deep Listening in the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection

What we’ll be talking about: to prepare for the Anna & Elizabeth Smithsonian Folkways album The Invisible Comes To Us, Anna Roberts-Gevalt conducted research in the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection at Middlebury College’s Special Collections and Archives. Come join us for a special event in Special Collections space itself to explore this fascinating collection of Vermont and New England traditional music with Anna

What we’ll be talking about: digital technology raises new possibilities—and new ethical and practical challenges—for thinking about intangible cultural heritage. One of Anna’s new projects finds her re-recording versions of songs in the locations where the original field recordings were made. She digitally maps and shares these experiences as reflections on time, place, and tradition across distances of background, belief systems, and social positions. Her developing project will serve as a means for our discussion of how artistic practices might combine with computational ones to address pressing issues of engaged listening

What we’ll be talking about: Anna will present her work with the crankie, which Sue Truman describes as “an old storytelling art form. It’s a long illustrated scroll that is wound onto two spools. The spools are loaded into a box which has a viewing screen. The scroll is hand-cranked while the story is told. It can be accompanied by a narrative, song or tune.” Peter Hamlin presents his modern version of the crankie—his work with virtual reality technologies to create immersive spaces shaped by music composition. Come take in some demonstrations and hang around to try them out, have some snacks, and chat as we explore the collision of old and new technologies